A User Equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system may have multiple operating modes, including an active operating mode and a standby operating mode. In an active operating mode, all UE functions are available, and the UE may be transmitting or receiving communication signals or otherwise being used by a user, for example. A standby operating mode in which at least some UE functions are disabled could be useful for conserving power, for example, but requires a connection to the wireless communication system to be established or re-established before communication signals can be transmitted or received.
In current Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, for instance, UEs have a Radio Resource Control (RRC) idle mode as a standby operating mode. When downlink (DL) data is to be transmitted to a UE by a network element in a communication system or uplink (UL) data is to be transmitted by a UE to a network element, a connection establishment procedure must be completed in order for the UE to transition from the RRC idle mode to an RRC connected mode, before data transmission and/or reception can begin.